We now have technology and user interface support to allow the use of dyes to change the colors of decorations including banners, beds, couches, sofas, and more! We have begun updating our game assets to accept dyes. This will take time as each asset has to be modified individually. Our plan is to maintain a careful balance between craftable items and store items in this effort. For now we are focusing on cloth items but we plan to expand to leather, and possibly wood as well. In Release 57 many Banners (including Heraldy Banners), Canvas Furniture, Fine Red Upholstered Furniture, and Fine White & Gold Upholstered Furniture will support dyes. Above you can see an assortment of the those furniture pieces dyed. Below is what the Fine Red Upholstered Long Couch looks like with a variety of dyes applied to it.

The Release 54 Livestream(s) items were all Tropical and Polynesian themed in honor of the summer months. Damon Waldrip and Scott “Scottie” Jones have been busily working on creating them this release and they are turning out amazing! This week we are revealing the Polynesian Spear and Polynesian Dress with Tropical Flower Crown.

In the past week we have had design kickoff meetings for several game systems including Fishing (Phase 2) and Player Made Dungeons. We will be posting more about Fishing (Phase 2) soon! In exciting news we have been able to make faster progress on Player Made Dungeons than expected due to how much it uses underlying systems like our basements. While we had originally planned this for an Episode 2 feature we now believe we can have a version of the system up and running as soon as Q4 of this year without affecting our work on other systems like Fishing! To kick off the upcoming launch of this exciting player made content we are going make available five dungeon entrances, along with five static example dungeons in Release 57. One dungeon entrance and one example dungeon will be craftable, four will be purchasable from the Add On Store.

The included static example dungeons, complete with creatures and loot, will vary in point size and difficulty level and can be used until the player built dungeon feature goes live. When the player built dungeons feature goes live in Q4 2018, the example dungeons will vanish and be replaced by an entry room but the player will receive the blueprints to all the pieces needed to rebuild the dungeon (some assembly required!). Player built dungeons will be expandable and customizable with in-game craftable rooms and/or Add On Store rooms. As a bonus the Add On Store Dungeons include a Unity asset pack of dungeon rooms and hallways that you can experiment with using Unity which is free for non-professionals to download!

Tomb Entrance plus 50 Point Dungeon (craftable)

This sarcophagus can be crafted to use as the entrance to your dungeon. There will also be a craftable 50 point example static dungeon, complete with creatures and loot, for low level players that can be used until the player built dungeon feature goes live. Read more…

This past Tuesday, July 31st, Shooter Jennings treated all of us to a preview of his newest album, “Shooter”, at a special album release party in the player owned town of Ordinis Mortis. For a brief time when Release 56 launched there were multiple “Shooters” scattered around Novia who had a special quest. The first 25 players who completed the quest got on the secret guest list to get backstage at the event and received prizes directly from the real Shooter Jennings. Those prizes were Shooter heraldry items and wax cylinders of tracks from Shooter’s album. While the prizes were being handed out DJ Darkstarr spun tunes on Avatars Radio. After the prizes were handed out everyone got to hear the new album which releases on August 10th and then DJ Darkstarr played spun more tunes for another couple of hours while everyone danced. NOTE: Everyone who completed the quest before the event also received a couple of Shooter prizes in their in-game mailboxes courtesy of Serafina and Vas Corp Por.

Shooter Heraldry Art:

The event itself was held in a basement decorated amazingly by a crew led by Minerva and included the efforts of Cambria Stormlin, Shimizu, Griffler, Wind Silvermoon, Gaelis Tragan, Karrin Murphy, Sindariya Tyelma, Gurney, Arianna, Drake Aedus, Rambo, and Luca Xante. Above ground there was a maze that spelled out Shooter and before the event started there was a line that built up (just like a real concert!).

As part of our Q3 efforts to improve the New User Experience we are separating the tutorials from the story spaces in the three starting areas (Solace Bridge, Highvale, and Blood River). We will be building a new focused tutorial space that the Oracle sends you to from the Confirmatory on the Isle of Storms that walks you through the game basics in a gated fashion (i.e. you cannot advance to the next room until you prove you can swing a sword). Once you complete all the tutorials you will return to the Isle of Storms and then resume your journey through the Lunar Rift to one of the three starting areas. Those areas are being polished to be more focused and tighter in their direction. We are also removing the tutorial elements and having them be almost entirely focused on story. In the case of Solace Bridge this means rebuilding it which we are excited to show you progress on in this week’s update. We hope to have all this complete by the end of Q3 (Release 58).

Here are some super early, in-progress shots of the new Solace Bridge space. We’re focusing a lot on the first three starter maps (Highvale, Blood River, and Solace Bridge (Not the outskirts)) in the next few upcoming releases.

Astronomers across New Britannia have noted that the approaching comet has agitated the creatures of Novia and Hidden Vale, making many bolder and more ferocious. Rumors suggest that the aether surrounding the comet has been mutating some of the most powerful creatures into new monstrous variations. Explorers of the world’s most dangerous regions are reporting sightings of Aether Dragons, Aether Corpions, and even Aether Liches! Woe be to any unwary Avatar who stumbles into their path!

As revealed in the Release 55 Livestream we have launched the Stretch Goal store for Episode 2! These are stretch goals with rewards that can be used in the game now (or at least very soon)! When you purchase the item you will get it as an in-game reward immediately (or very soon if the item is still in progress), even if the stretch-goal is not met. These rewards are completely unique. They will not be sold in the add-on store, in-game nor as a bundle item. Once the stretch-goal is met we will begin work on the functionality for Episode 2 and all the items purchased would gain some function related to the goal when Episode 2 launches. For instance the foal from the Mounts stretch goal would grow into a horse that you could then ride. Each goal will have a progress bar underneath tracking the progress. General philosophy is that these items cost slightly more than equivalent items because they are linked to stretch goals. Read more…

We are polishing various aspects of our combat and PVP systems in preparation for the upcoming Castle Defense Scenarios feature. This includes making areas of PVP engagement where no ransom items drop, where grouping rules can be controlled (on/off), having death remove you from the scene until the scene restarts, new currencies/merchants/rewards for PVP scenarios, and better overall physical spaces for PVP. To that end we have created a combat area where we can iterate on these systems over the next several releases called The Obsidian Trials. It will be where we implement, test, and polish various systems to improve and enhance our combat and PVP systems so that they can be expanded to support Castle Defense. In Release 55 we have built the space and implemented new death mechanics, blocked grouping, and removed ransoms. In the next few releases we will be adding boundaries that change the size of the play space, win/loss conditions, timer resets, and a new PVP currency that can be spent on rewards like titles, components, consumables, emotes, and patterns.

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